Comment

It is incredibly rich for a country such as Israel and its supporters to accuse others of shutting down debate and acting against free speech.

Israel and its supporters have consistently done all they can to shut down and suppress fair and reasonable discussion about the situation in Israel and Palestine - one of the most effective weapons they use is constantly accusing those who oppose the awful human rights Israel commits as being anti-semetic.

There is nothing I can see in anything that the protestors said that is anti-semitic.

Human rights abuses are appalling whoever commits them, and Israel should be roundly condemned by all who value human dignity, democracy, freedom, and who oppose ethnic cleansing. For what Israel does on a systematic basis is ethnic cleansing in every sense of the word.

I find the cry of "this is not Tehran" ironic. What would the reaction have been if the university had invited a representative of Iran to speak? What would the reaction be if the university had invited a representative of Hamas?

We can be sure in both cases such a speaker would not receive a warm welcome - we could even predict that he would be heckled - and rightly so, for representatives of repressive regimes that abuse human rights on a consistent basis, which then come to speak at supposedly free academic forums, deserve to be met by vigorous and appropriate protests. That is called freedom of speech.

I think it is shameful for a university which claims to value academic freedom to invite the representative of a repressive ethnic clearning regime such as Israel to speak. Good for the protesters.

Will the university now be demonstrating its balance by inviting a representative of the Palestinian authority or Hamas to speak?

I am also a bit confused about why this video and the rubbishy propaganda piece that accompanies it are here. It can surely not be based on the suggestion that Palestians who object to the murder and ethnic cleansing of the people and families are acting through unreasonable religious motivations?

RDFRS US:
The mission of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and suffering.